


you are my brightest star

by claire_writes_485



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Coming of Age, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Night Terrors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claire_writes_485/pseuds/claire_writes_485
Summary: There are some things in life that won't change. And there are some that will.You can't get away from your past, but you can embrace your future.As for Will, he's almost twenty and can't see anything in his future but Nico di Angelo. Which is a problem, because Nico is his best friend. He shouldn't fall in love. He cannot fall in love.He falls in love anyway.This is about life, and sleep, and the things we do for love.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Kudos: 19





	you are my brightest star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: homophobic slur
> 
> "They want us to be inhuman.  
> They want us to throw out our kindness.  
> They want us to bury our love  
> and burn our hope.  
> Their aim is to take all our light!  
> They think their bricked walls  
> will separate us.  
> They think their damned bombs  
> will defeat us.  
> They are so ignorant they don’t understand  
> that my soul and your soul are old friends.  
> They are so ignorant they don’t understand  
> that when they cut you I bleed.  
> They are so ignorant they don’t understand  
> that we will never be afraid,  
> we will never hate  
> and we will never be silent  
> for life is ours!”  
> -Kamand Kojouri

This is how it begins.

Nico wakes up on a gasp and stumbles through the dark and into Will, and he does not know where he is. He must be dreaming.

(But then, what is life if not a bad dream, and sleep if not a worse one?) 

Will catches him and the next thing he knows, they half-fall together onto something, and Nico can't keep his eyes open. His eyes blink open and shut of their own volition, slurred words slip out of his mouth, and everything he sees feels unreal. His vision warps at the edges, strange and bright, and all he hears is the rush of blood in his own ears, like being underwater. It's cold.

(Never trust your senses. They'll betray you at the worst time.)

The next time he opens his eyes, his cheek is pressed to a warm chest and his hair is in his face. Then there's a hand stroking it away. He looks up- or tries to- but he can't see before he is falling away again.

(There is darkness, and the glow of the Phlegethon, and the look on Bianca's face when she went away.)

The world is bright, and cold, and echoey, and here it's warm. He doesn't bother to open his eyes when the darkness spits him out again.

-

This is how it begins.

Will Solace is fourteen when he sees Nico di Angelo for the first time. He is skinny and short and looks like he hasn't slept in twelve weeks, and Will is watching him across a crowded cafeteria. There are many things he has to be doing. He can't tear his eyes away.

Will Solace is fourteen when he comes out. Will Solace is fourteen when he gets jumped walking home. Will Solace is fourteen when they knock him to the ground, hold his arms down, and kick him until he can't breathe. 

Will Solace is fourteen when he's called a faggot for the first time in his life.

Will Solace is fourteen and close to passing out when he hears a boy yelling next to him and thinks, _just get it over with._

Will Solace is fourteen when he opens his eyes and sees a boy with a blooming bruise on his left cheek and a split lip leaning over him, the most concerned he's ever seen someone be about him, and thinks, _is this Death?_ _He's too pretty to be Death._

Will Solace is fourteen when he wakes up properly, in the hospital, to his mother fussing over him and the nurses looking at him. He accepts their care distractedly- he says he's tired when he stares into space too long, when he sleeps more than he should. Really, all he's thinking about is the boy. He remembers looking at him what seems to be a lifetime ago, across a cafeteria, before everything changed.

Will remembers every detail of his face. And he wishes, in some small, sick way, that he could forget.

-

There are some truths that can't be managed. There are some stories, older than time, that beg to be told.

(But stories never die, although their exact words may be lost to the ages. There are some ideas that will outlive stone and the stars.)

Nico di Angelo is a boy composed of nothing but dreams, good and bad. His life has simple truths and not much more- for though he knows the truth is rarely pure and never simple, he's read far too much poetry, and he can't help but feel sometimes that he's a little mad in the worst and best of ways.

Nico di Angelo is a dreamer, and he hates it sometimes.

-

Will can't bring himself to think about a life without Nico. And he can't bring himself to think of one with him, either.

-

It's three in the morning on a Friday night in the city- Saturday already, if you really want to be pedantic- and Will is awake. There's a paper due on the first of the month, in two weeks, but it's not enough time. Not for him. No, Will Solace is a neurotic of the highest caliber, and an academic besides; he has a love-hate relationship with deadlines. That, and he likes to say that sleep is for the dead.

(In reality, he thinks privately that sleep is for the weak, and besides, he has his best thoughts tired. He likes to say that, too. He's wrong. The bad ones just go away when you're tired enough to go half-insane.)

He sighs and puts his laptop on the coffee table, next to the magazines him and Nico order and yet never bother to read and last night's takeout cartons. He gets up to make another pot of coffee. Normally he hates the stuff hot, but desperate times call for desperate measures; if it has caffeine, it's good enough for him. 

He stands at the counter and rubs his eyes and thinks, _What the hell is going on?_

-

The coffee's nearly done when Nico stumbles into the kitchen like a zombie. Will knows the signs of sleepwalking intellectually, of course- _sleeptalking, little to no memory of the event, difficulty rousing the sleepwalker in an episode_ \- but it's different when Nico is standing in front of him with his eyes glazed, looking like he's about to fall over. Reasonably speaking, he should definitely guide Nico back into his own bed, tuck him in, and leave him there. Reasonably speaking, he should work on his paper. 

(Reasonably speaking, he should get Nico out of his goddamn head.)

He does neither of those things. Instead, he takes Nico by the hand and leads him to the couch, and when the other boy's knees buckle like a paper doll, Will catches him (barely) and they fall together onto the couch. Instead he lays there while Nico murmurs in his sleep. Instead he whispers incoherently into his best friend's hair and notices, distractedly, how Nico's skin is feverishly dry-hot where it touches his own. It feels like it should hurt, but instead it feels like curling up with the sun. It feels right.

He looks at the head sprawled on his chest and tries not to think about what time it is. He forgets about his paper entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”  
> -Margaret Atwood
> 
> "Sleep, those little slices of death- how I loathe them."  
> -Edgar Allan Poe
> 
> Melinoe- Greek goddess of ghosts and spirits, bringer of nightmares and madness


End file.
